Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Welcome back to the Spiritual Disciplines core seminar, or if this is your first time joining us, it's good to see you this morning.

For the past ten weeks we've been surveying a variety of different spiritual disciplines laid out in Scripture.

Just to review, so that we know what we're talking about here, can someone remind me what we mean when we use the term "spiritual discipline"?

What does that mean?

That's right.

The spiritual disciplines are the practices God has called us to implement into our lives so as to sanctify us, grow our trust and dependence upon Him, and increase our love for his people.

Some of the spiritual disciplines include things include: Reading the Bible, Praying, Fasting, Confessing Sin, and Serving.

And the point of this class is not to give us a long list of things that we need to be doing and which we should feel guilty about if we're not doing.

No, the point of this class is for us to face up to God's word and consider seriously how he calls us to orient and fashion our lives.

These disciplines do not save us.

They are not a way of earning God's favor or of paying God back for the grace that he has freely given us in Christ.

No, faith in Christ alone is what saves us from our sins and restores us to our Heavenly Father.

These disciplines pictures the kind of life that springs forth from a heart that has already been redeemed by the blood of Christ.

Because we have received so sure a salvation, because of the eternal riches Christ secured for us in his death and resurrection, we now want to live in a way that brings him glory, evidences a trust in his promises, and points others to him.

These spiritual disciplines are some of the major ways that we do just that.

We read God's word because we long to know and obey whatever our God has revealed to us in the Scriptures.

We pray because we are holy dependent on our God for life and godliness.

We confess sin because, even though we've been saved from sin in an ultimate sense, we acknowledge that our flesh still rages against the spirit and we are ever increasingly zealous for holiness.

So it is in that spirit – wanting to know what the Bible call us to so that we can live lives in accordance with it, lives that brings glory to God – that we take up our topic for this morning, and that is this: The Spiritual Discipline of Stewardship.

What is stewardship?

What we mean by stewardship is taking responsibility for the things the Lord has entrusted to us.

It's being faithful with them.

A steward is a person who manages someone else's property, someone who takes care of something, a caretaker.

When you're put in charge of someone's else's stuff, you handle it with care, especially if that person is in a position of authority over you.

My wife's boss let us use his crib when Beckett was born, and you know what, we were careful with that thing.

We didn't want to scratch it up or break it.

It wasn't ours.

As Christians, we understand that in a very real sense everything that we have has been given to us by God.

"The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it," we read in .

In other words, God owns everything we own – and he calls us now to use the gifts he's given to us wisely, faithfully, for his glory.

Now we could talk about stewardship in relation to many things – our time, our speech, our relationships – but this morning we want to talk about stewardship in relation to, dun, dun, dun, money.

The reason is simple, the Bible makes it clear that the way we use money – much like our speech -- is a window onto our true devotion, our true allegiance.

We read in : “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

What do you treasure?

Well, one of the ways to tell, these verses would suggest, is to look at our bank statements, our credit card statements.

What are we doing with our money?

If, like me, that question pricks you a bit, convicts you, then let's spend the next few minutes reminding ourselves from Scripture about how we ought to be thinking about being good stewards of our finances.

We are going to do that by considering ten New Testament principles of giving.

Ok, here we go.

1. God owns our money.

We read in : "The silver is mine and the gold is mine," declares the Lord Almighty."

I think in this country -- a country that prides itself on being made up of hardworking, pick yourself-up-by-your-own bootstraps kind of people – hearing those words can be offensive.

"I worked my tail off for the money I make" is not an uncommon response.

There's an element of truth to that, especially when we look vertically out over our lives.

Many of us work painstakingly hard for our paychecks, we put in the long hours to try to get ahead.

If we didn't do the work, we wouldn't have the money that we have.

But what I love about the Bible is that it reveals to us what it going on in an ultimate sense.

It reveals the deep truths, the biggest picture.

And that deepest truth and that biggest picture is that behind everything that we make is a sovereign God.

We can trace everything that we have back to his hand.

We are only stewards of the resources God has given us, not owners.

That means that the primary determination of how we use our money shouldn't be our own personal whimsy our desire but God's word.

Our question should not be, “How much of my money do I give to God?,” but rather, “How much of God’s money should I keep for myself?”

2. Giving is an act of worship.

Paul, writing in , says this: "I have received full payment and even more; I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent.

They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God."

Paul uses the language of sacrifices, of burnt offerings, of Old Covenant temple offerings in talking about giving.

Those who have given themselves to the Lord are liberal with their giving, even in hard times.

We'll round out this idea a little more in our next point.

So, what exactly makes giving worshipful?

3. Giving reflects faith in God's provision.

Giving is a distinct indication of how much we trust God to provide for our needs.

Consider the widow from the gospel of Mark, chapter 12:

"Jesus," we read there, beginning in verse 41, "sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.

Many rich people threw in large amounts.

But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury thatn all the other others.

They all gave our of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on."

What did the widow's gift reveal about her?

It revealed that she trusted in God's provision.

She, unlike the rich folks, made a sacrifice with her offering and so showed, stunningly, her faith in God.

When we give, when we let go our money into the offering plate or the online equivalent, it is like we are presenting our passport from a heavenly kingdom, showing that our hope is not ultimately in this world or its riches, but in the God of the universe.

Now, one of the main reasons, I think, we don't give is that we fear the future.

We don't know what's coming down the pike, so we are tempted to hoard.

And by doing that, we are essentially saying that our security is in our money.

The problem with that: money, as the last few years have made painfully clear, is unpredictable.

Besides, money has no power to actually satisfy us.

Donald Trump said once, "Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop."

He is absolutely wrong.

Money cannot buy happiness.

But God sent his son to purchase for us eternal happiness through his death on the cross and his resurrection.

The kingdom of that God, a God who happens to be sovereign over the future and everything that we fear, the kingdom of God is an infinitely better investment than the kingdom of this world.

4. Our giving should be sacrificial and generous.

We see this kind of sacrificial giving typified in the book of 2 Corinthians, when Paul writes of the Macedonian Christians.

He writes in : "And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches.

2 Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.

3 For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.

Entirely on their own, 4 they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints.

5 And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will."

Like the widow mentioned in that previous passage, these Macedonian Christians were not rich, but they gave generously, sacrificially.

Giving isn't sacrificial unless it's a sacrifice.

Does your giving cause you to make different choices about how you live?

Sacrifice comes with a cost and causes us to forego or delay things we want for the sake of giving to God’s kingdom.

In his book Ministries of Mercy, Tim Keller writes that if we are tithing without any curtailment of our standard of living, then we need to give more.

For giving to be sacrificial, it needs to hit home, needs to affect the way we live, the decisions we make.

It will most likely be inconvenient.

It might mean going without something we really, really want – or putting off doing something we've always wanted to do.